by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, October 27, 2003 1:58 P.M. EST

'Of Course We Don't Understand'
And a happy Ramadan to you too. "Car bombers struck the international Red Cross headquarters and four police stations across Baghdad on Monday, killing about 40 people in a spree of destruction that terrorized the Iraqi capital on the first day of the Muslim holy month," the Associated Press reports.

The attack on the Red Cross killed 12 at last count, and the murderer employed a familiar tactic from the Palestinian Arab terror war against Israel: The vehicle he used was an ambulance.

"Of course we don't understand why somebody would attack the Red Cross," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani tells the AP. "The Red Cross has operated in this country since 1980, and we have not been involved in politics."

What's the big mystery? As President Bush said this morning, "There are terrorists in Iraq who are willing to kill anybody in order to stop our progress." Terrorists have attacked American airplane passengers and office workers and Israeli schoolchildren and restaurant goers. Why would the Red Cross think it is immune?

The Red Cross's naiveté about terrorism in Iraq reflects a general cluelessness. In an Oct. 10 dispatch, Reuters reported that "the International Red Cross say it is unacceptable that the United States continues to detain more than 600 people at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba without charges or prospect of a timely trial,"

"The main concern for us is the U.S. authorities . . . have effectively placed them beyond the law," said Amanda Williamson, spokeswoman in the Washington office of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday.

This is nonsense. Terrorists place themselves beyond the law by refusing to observe the rules of war, which prohibit the targeting of civilians. The ICRC is one of many "human rights" groups that have been trying to blur the distinction between illegal combatants and legitimate prisoners of war to the advantage of the former. Now that terrorists have attacked the Red Cross, will the Red Cross stop defending terrorists?

Weasel Watch--I
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz escaped injury yesterday "when a barrage of air-to-ground missiles slammed into a hotel" where he was staying in Baghdad, the New York Times reports. The attack killed a U.S. military officer, apparently a colonel. U.S. officials believe the attackers were Saddam loyalists. And where did they get the weapons? From the axis of weasels, according to Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey:

Half the missiles were 68 millimeter, which have a range of two to three miles; the others were 85 millimeter, whose range is three to four miles, he said. The smaller ones were French made, and designed for use by helicopters. The others were Russian. The French rockets, officers said, were quite new, and likely purchased after the arms embargo was in place.

"They were in pristine condition," said one military officer who inspected the rocket tubes and assembly.

Be Careful What You Wish For
In an interview with London's Daily Telegraph, Syria's Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara "claimed that Syria was unable to stop resistance fighters pouring across the border into Iraq to attack American troops. 'They are very determined and many of them dream of seeing an American tank,' he said."

Plan 9 From Outer Space
After watching last night's Democratic presidential debate, waking up this morning to news of new carnage in Iraq really brought home just how woefully inadequate the Democrats are when it comes to national security. Here are some quotes:

John Edwards: "I believe that Saddam was a threat that had to be dealt with; therefore I voted for the congressional resolution. However, I said at the time that it was critical for us to have a plan for what would happen now. This president has no plan of any kind that I can see."

Joe Lieberman: "Tough decision. Eighty-seven billion dollars is a lot of money. Eighty-seven billion dollars is a lot of money. It should have been less if George Bush had brought in our allies and had a plan.

Dennis Kucinich: "I could tell you that I've actually presented a plan--it's on my Web site at Kucinich.us--it's an exit strategy to get the U.N. in and the U.S. out of Iraq."

Wesley Clark: "When you put American troops in harm's way, you better not do it without a plan and a strategy and the determination that you're going to prevail."

The claim that there is "no plan" is just silly; even sillier is the implication that a "plan" can produce a casualty- and cost-free war. Just imagine a couple of Saddam loyalists or al Qaeda terrorists sitting in a basement preparing one of this morning's car bombings. "We better not do this," one says. "President Edwards has a plan!"

Clark also accused the Bush administration of having a plan: "The failure of this administration was not to put the troops in to finish the job against Osama bin Laden. And you know why they didn't do it? They didn't do it because, all along, their plan was to save those troops to go after Saddam Hussein."

Asked by Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron to explain why he voted to defund the troops after supporting the war, Sen. John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, pointed out that he served in Vietnam:

It is absolutely consistent, because what I voted for was to hold Saddam Hussein accountable but to do it right.

This president has done it wrong every step of the way. He promised that he would have a real coalition. He has a fraudulent coalition. He promised he would go through the United Nations and honor the inspections process. He did not. He promised he would go to war as a last resort, words that mean something to me as a veteran. He did not.

When Lieberman argued that Kerry's position was not in fact consistent, Kerry countered by pointing out that he served in Vietnam:

Well, Joe, I have seared in me an experience which you don't have, and that's the experience of being one of those troops on the front lines when the policy has gone wrong. And the way you best protect the troops is to guarantee that you put the troops in the safest, strongest position as fast as possible.

Lieberman won the argument, however:

What do we look back and wonder about our time in Vietnam? We didn't support our troops. If everyone had voted the way John Kerry did, the money wouldn't have been there to support our troops.

The New York Times reports that Kerry "visibly stiffened at that." He tried to respond, but moderator Gwen Ifill cut him off: "We could go back and forth on this all night, but we really have a lot of ground to cover, so we would like to go back to the next question." Had Kerry been allowed to speak, we have little doubt he would have pointed out that he served in Vietnam.

The line from the debate that stuck in our mind the most, though, was something Joe Lieberman said in response to a lunatic rant by Al Sharpton:

Sharpton: It's not a question of terrorist. Who defines "terrorist"? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend. We were the ones that worked with Saddam Hussein; the United States worked with bin Laden. I went in 2001 and met with Arafat at the insistence of the Israeli foreign minister. Would anyone here meet with Arafat in terms of trying to get peace in the Middle East? Let's put the hard questions out. Sen. Lieberman, would you meet with the head of the Palestinian Authority? In answer to your question, I think that Boykin's statement is wrong. This is not about one religion against another; it's about right versus wrong. I said it earlier, when we were talking about right to choose. One of the reasons I'm glad to be in this race is we're going to have the battle between the Christian right and the right Christians.

Lieberman: Anytime I come after the Reverend Sharpton, I always want to say, "Amen, brother."

Does he really want to say "Amen, brother" when he comes after "the Reverend Sharpton," or is he just pandering? The latter prospect is troubling, the former downright frightening.

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy
  
  
• "My mother is from the South. One of the things I learned is you can't plant a watermelon seed and grow oranges. You cannot get right out of wrong. . . . We cannot continue to play Bush roulette. It used to be Russian roulette, now it's Bush roulette."--Al Sharpton
  
  
• "Gen. Boykin has confused the heck out of the White House with all this talk about the Almighty, because when he talks about the Almighty, the president thinks he's talking about Cheney, Cheney thinks he's talking about Halliburton, . . . and John Ashcroft thinks they're talking about him--so they don't know where to go."--John Kerry
  
  
• "We blew the place up; we have to fix it back."--Carol Moseley Braun

'Running Zionist-American Imperialist Dog'
Why are the Democrats taking such incoherent positions on Iraq? Because they're trying to appeal to the "antiwar" base of the party. The Belligerent Bunny Blog has some eye-opening photos from an antiwar demonstration in Washington over the weekend. The first shows an Iraqi flag--the old, Saddam-era Iraqi flag--that someone is flying. Then there are placards bearing the following messages:

• "The Destruction of the U.S.A. is a necessary condition for Peace Put no Hope in a Vote Fight the Power"
  
  
• "Running Zionist-American Imperialist Dog: What Right Do You Have NOT to Be Afraid?"
  
  
• "God Loves us All--You stupid Asses" (this one has a peace sign on it)
  
  
• "Support The Troops Bring them Home!"
  
  
• "BUSH IS A COWARDLY TERRORIST"
  
  
• "BUSH KILLS U.N. HEALS"

The New York Times reports the protest drew "more than 10,000 people" and "borrowed heavily from the imagery of 1960's peace protests over Vietnam, as young people in tie-dyed shirts and bandanas waved placards bearing peace signs and exhorted the White House to 'make love, not war.' " Will the hippie vote be enough to win next year's presidential election? It seems unlikely.

Good News Watch
Love is in the air in Iraq, the Washington Post reports:

Freed of an onerous Baath Party bureaucracy that sought to regulate even the most fundamental aspects of Iraqi life--such as who married whom--Iraqis lately are tying the knot in numbers not seen in recent memory.

Before President Saddam Hussein was toppled, the ruling party imposed a complex and strict set of matrimonial rules on Iraqis, particularly on members of the military. And since military service was compulsory for Iraqi men, the effects were pervasive. Now civil servants estimate at least twice as many couples are registering for marriage as were a year ago. . . .

"Because Saddam is gone, now I'm getting married!" said Wasim Adel, 27, beaming beside his bride, Sheelan Shafeeq, 18, in a crowded corridor at Karrada city hall, which serves a neighborhood in central Baghdad. The hallway was jammed with couples making their way from the office of the registration clerk to the office of the judge who would perform a civil ceremony. Four couples waited ahead of Adel and Shafeeq.

"There is no comparison between now and before," said Kamel Abbas Tammimi, Karrada's senior judge. "Now there are no obstacles."

Yesterday's New York Times carried a story with the headline "Iraqis Get Used to Life Without Hussein, and Many Find They Like It." The Times is reporting something good, and that's progress, but it'd be nice if they'd bring us some good news for a change.

Infidel Shots
A U.N. effort is under way in northern Nigeria to administer polio vaccines to millions of children. Impeding the effort, the Associated Press reports, are "Pervasive rumors among Muslim fundamentalists" that the vaccine is "part of a U.S. plot to spread AIDS and render Muslims infertile":

"The Western world has never wished Muslims well," said Yakubu Husseini, a 20-year-old teacher coming out of Friday prayers in the Muslim-dominated northern city of Kano. "Why should they expect us to believe that vaccines they make these days are not another frontier to wage war against Muslims?"

Now, it would be easy to deplore such stupidity and paranoia, but really, aren't we just as bad? After all, when was the last time you had a vaccine developed in a Muslim country?

Weasel Watch--II
Germany's leader won re-election last year on an anti-American platform, but now he's in trouble, reports Medienkritik, a German blog:

The Social Democrats (SPD), German Chancellor Gerhard Schoeder's ruling party, is in a world of political trouble. The latest opinion poll by the German TV-channel ZDF currently shows the SPD at a new historic record-breaking low of 22% in the approval ratings. This current result is down a full 5 percentage points from the already painfully low 27% approval rating of a few weeks ago.

On a scale from -5 to +5 the German government clocks a -1.7--the worst result of any German government since the start of TV channel ZDF's "Politbarometer" in 1977. For the SPD and Schroeder, these results amount to nothing less than political free fall.

In the meantime, the conservative opposition CDU's support edged up to a solid majority at 53 %.

Yesterday the SPD lost big in regional elections in Brandenburg, a state in the former East Germany. The party finished third behind the Christian Democratic Union and the Party of Democratic Socialism, as the erstwhile commies are known.

Wiz Kids
What's black and white and wrong all over? A newspaper. The Berkshire Eagle, to be exact. The Pittsfield, Mass.-based daily weighs in with an anti-Bush editorial:

"Don't nobody bring me no bad news," sings Diana Ross in her role as the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wiz." In an interview with FOX News' Brit Hume on September 22, President Bush made the shocking--and weren't we at The Eagle simply stunned--revelation that he doesn't read the newspapers for himself.

In fact, Diana Ross did not play the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wiz"; she played Dorothy. Mabel King played the Wicked Witch (known as Evillene), and it was she who sang the lyrics the Eagle quotes. When newspapermen lecture us on the importance of reading newspapers, you'd think they'd at least bother to get their facts straight.

Liberals for Starvation
In a column for WorldNetDaily, liberal commentator Bill Press weighs in on behalf of Michael Schiavo, the Florida man who wants to starve his wife, Terri, to death. Press falsely describes Terri Schiavo as "a brain-dead body"; in fact, as we noted Friday, she has been diagnosed as being in a "persistent vegetative state."

The New York Times quotes Dr. Ron Cranford, a Minneapolis neurologist who has examined Terri Schiavo and testified in favor of her husband, as saying there is no hope of recovery: "The CAT scans indicate a massive shrinkage of her brain, with its higher centers completely destroyed, which indicates irreversibility."

But irreversibly damaged isn't the same as dead. The Web site of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, her parents' organization, features downloadable videos of Terri responding to her surroundings, including smiling at her mother's affection and opening her eyes in response to a doctor's command. Even if this is all instinctual, Schiavo is still far from a lifeless body.

Getting back to Press, we have to wonder if he really meant to say this, in reference to the law Gov. Jeb Bush signed last week to save Terri Schiavo's life:

All Americans [should] be outraged at what took place in Florida. This is Big Brother at his worst: Politicians making medical decisions. Politicians telling us when we can die and when we can't. Soviet communism didn't get any worse than this.

Surely Press has heard of the Ukranian famine of 1932-33. Is it really his view that it's better to starve millions of innocent people to death than to feed one?

Life Imitates 'Saturday Night Live'

"What's all this fuss I hear about endangered feces? That's outrageous. Why is feces endangered? How can you possibly run out of such a thing? Just look around you--you can see it all over the place. And besides, who wants to save that anyway?"--Gilda Radner as Emily Litella, "Saturday Night Live," ca 1976

"The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday to make it illegal to urinate or defecate in public. . . . Some advocates for the homeless were outraged."--Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 2003

Call it Afgoneistan
"Nearly 1,000 Afghan militiamen yesterday handed in their AK47s and grenade-launchers, weapons that have killed untold numbers of Russians and Taliban in the past 25 years, as an attempt to disarm the warlords began," reports London's Daily Telegraph.

"I've lost count of how many Russians and Taliban I've killed with my gun," says Ebrahim Hasim, who's been fighting for two decades. "But it is now time to banish the word 'gun' from this country." Banish the word? That didn't work when they tried it in Oregone.

Where Credit Is Due
On Friday we noted Reuters' refusal to run an ad by the United Methodist Church and linked to a church press release. We had forgotten that on Thursday, a reader who works for the Journal News of White Plains, N.Y., had sent us the story with a note that his paper broke it.

The Dems Agree
"GOP Judges Offensive"--headline, Robert Novak column, Townhall.com, Oct. 27

Just Wait Till Last Year
"Some 7,000 people have registered to attend Microsoft's professional developers conference, which begins today in Los Angeles. The turnout is a record, Microsoft says. The computer professionals will be shown glimpses of Microsoft's next version of Windows, named Longhorn, which will be built using Web services standards. Microsoft has not said when Longhorn will be ready, but it is not expected to be shipped until late 1995 or 1996."--New York Times, Oct. 27, 2003

What Would Kids Do Without Experts?
"Stop Feeding Kids Junk, Experts Warn"--headline, CanWest News Service, Oct. 27

What Would Sea Turtles Do Without Experts?
"Expert: Sea Grape Trim May or May Not Harm Sea Turtles"--headline, Jupiter (Fla.) Courier, Oct. 25

It's the Eponymy, Stupid
"A 23-year-old Garrett County woman charged in connection with a fatal drunken driving accident nine days ago was arrested again early Friday for alleged drunken driving," the Cumberland (Md.) News-Times reports. The suspect, Julie Marie Jenkins, hails from the town of Accident.

First the World Series, Now This
"Tennis: American Fish Captures First ATP Title Sunday"--headline, Voice of America Web site, Oct. 26

His Presidency Would Have Been a Real Horror Show
"Gore-Filled Flicks Slash Competition at Box Office"--headline, FoxNews.com, Oct. 25

Hey, Give It Back!
"Evangelicals Have Bush's Ear"--headline, Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Oct. 26

Plastic Pundette
Just in time for Christmas, TalkingPresidents.com announces the "12 inch tall talking Ann Coulter doll." Miniskirt and batteries are included, and the price is just $29.99. Here's something odd, though. The page says, "Shipping Weight: 0.00 pounds." Ann Coulter is thin, but she's not that thin.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Rosanne Klass, Mara Gold, Carl Sherer, Jerome Marcus, Eli Meisels, S.E. Brenner, Daniel Foty, Jeff Spiegel, Barak Moore, Brian O'Connor, Jeremy Winer, Aharon Mayne, Robert LeChevalier, Michael Segal, Gad Meir, Kenneth Killany, Heidi Huettner, Judie Amsel, Nathan Mower, Hampton Stevens, Adam Phillips, Yisrael Saperstein, Scott Ott, David Bookless, Lynn Cumpson, Morton Landowne, Rahghu Desikan, John Williamson, Keith Parker, Joel Goldberg, David Johnson, Thom Wilkerson, Nick Eckert, William Specht, Chris Averson, Daniel Schiff, Jason Crawford, William Schultz, Jennifer Ray, Paul Ruschmann, Austin Johnsen, Lee Stokes, Jim Orheim and Tom von Gremp. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Debt relief is more important to Iraq than donations.
• Robert Bartley: On child abuse and breast implants, our editorials are vindicated.
• Pete du Pont: Ohioans may revolt against higher taxes and spending.